Focus on what you can do, not what you can't do, and show other people and other founders out there, what you have been able to do.
Our favorite quote
Focus on what you can do, not what you can't do, and show other people and other founders out there, what you have been able to do.
Our favorite quote
How She Started: Tell me about your first two bootstrapped companies and your exit from Spacio. How did you determine it was the right time to exit Spacio?
Melissa Kwan: My first company was an agency that I ran for 4 to 5 years. It was a service company building apps in the real estate industry. I morphed that company into Spacio because I was finding it time-consuming to chase new deals and chase invoices. I wanted a product, so I just stopped selling services for my agency and sales stopped coming.
We did take side projects here and there to fund the second company Spacio. I then took all the revenue out of the agency and I took a loan to fund Spacio. It was about 4-4.5 years with Spacio before we exited.
I knew it was the right time to exit because I wasn't having fun anymore. There were so many cool things happening in the world that I wasn't a part of because I was leading Spacio. It got to a point where I felt like the opportunity cost was too high for me not to do something else.
I was talking to a friend and I was seeking his advice about exiting and my friend told me "If you are serious about that, we're looking to make our first acquisition, but you need to stay for at least two years.”
Since I had leverage in that my company was profitable I wanted to make sure that I got to keep my lifestyle of remote working, and I wanted to work for a person that was going to keep the company values. The whole negotiation lasted less than 5 months because we were bootstrapped, profitable, and fairly small.
HSS: What’s eWebinar’s story?
MK: Webinars are essential for business, but they require someone to be there to deliver the content. I started two companies before this one and I felt the pain points and time lost with leading webinars. I always used webinars to deliver content in my previous companies, and no matter how many I did it was never enough because there were different customers in different time zones.
I thought to myself if I'm robotic about this pitch why can't a robot do this job? My friends were also facing this problem with product demos, onboarding, training, etc. Though there were solutions out there, nothing completely fit my need, so once I exited Spacio knew I needed to start eWebinar.
HSS: How did you acquire your first customers?
MK: When I was starting Spacio my back was against the wall and sought feedback and advice on customer acquisition. The advice was to get 10 people to use it, and impress them. From there it can grow from 10 to 20 to 100 etc. With that advice, I was able to grow the company to an exit.
When I started eWebinar I offered a free trial and then told customers when we would start billing. I don’t believe in Beta testing because I find it virtually impossible to convert beta testers into paying customers.
However, because we were charging people, I knew the product had to be great, so we invested a lot of time and effort into branding. I see branding as our storefront and I wanted to make it look like we were an established company.
We spent 6 months building the brand and 6 months developing the product. I knew from my experience people don’t pay you unless your product is amazing, so we spent a lot of time developing it before we launched. I see incredible software as software that "just works". It predicts the needs of users with a UX they don't even have to think about. They can just come in, and the product itself will guide them toward experiencing their first value without instructions. It's software that naturally shortens the learning curve for users because it just makes sense.
I then created a spreadsheet of every person I knew that could use this product (~ 200 people), I went down the list and set up a video call as "here's what I'm doing now," and at the end, I asked, “would you be interested?” For those that were I then sat on a call with every customer to conduct usability testing. Then we made changes based on that feedback to make the process automatic.
HSS: How do you retain your customers?
MK: At this point, we've focused on delivering an amazing product that's 10x better than anything else on the market specifically what we do in webinar automation. We make sure that when they come in, they have the highest chance of success and the lowest chance of losing. In terms of reducing churn, we’ve prioritized improving activation onboarding.
HSS: What is your growth strategy?
MK: Right now I want to make sure that we’re breaking even and then we're profitable enough to pay everybody involved a market salary, then eventually double the market salary. I like to ensure my goals with eWebinar are incremental and achievable. At these points, I'm not striving to be a $100M or $1B company. Incremental goals make the experience more fun and less defeating if you don't get there. I want to make sure that everyone's comfortable, and we're not quite there yet.
HSS: Where do you see eWebinar growing?
MK: Right now I want to make sure that we’re breaking even and then we're profitable enough to pay everybody involved a market salary, then eventually double the market salary. I like to ensure my goals with eWebinar are incremental and achievable. At these points, I'm not striving to be a $100M or $1B company. Incremental goals make the experience more fun and less defeating if you don't get there. I want to make sure that everyone's comfortable, and we're not quite there yet.
HSS: What are your lessons learned so far?
MK: Do something that you love. It doesn’t have to be an industry you love. Just find the things that really make you happy. For me, it's having a fully remote team not having any employees, not going to any conferences.
I suggest making a list of things that you don't want to do, then make a list of things that make you happy and focus on doing the things that make you happy. Find a career or project or product that fits that. A lot of people do this backward. They focus on their experience and their education. Then they find a career to build on top of that. Then they try to be happy afterward and that's really backward thinking.
I had two companies in real estate tech that I didn't really love, and a big reason is that I never thought that I could figure out how to do something that wasn't in my area of expertise.
HSS: Do you have advice for female-founded businesses?
MK: I don't really have a lot of advice for female founders strictly because I don't believe in fighting for equality through segregation. I don’t identify as a female founder, I'm just a founder. I focus on my capabilities. I would say focus on what you can do, not what you can't do, and show other people and other founders out there, what you have been able to do despite any disadvantages.
- Insight: Recognize tradeoffs when considering an exit.
- Insight: When it comes to an exit take stock of where you have leverage in a negotiation.
- Use your own experiences to create solutions and ensure your solution has a large TAM.
- Insight: When approaching customer acquisition ensure your solution can impress people. In Melissa's case, she built a product that filled a need and was simple to use.
- Insight: When approaching customer acquisition, start with achievable goals.
- Insight: Understand how you want to launch. In Melissa's case, she did not want to Beta test her product. She only wanted paying users.
- Insight: Plan out your sales strategy. In Melissa's case, she had 200 contacts and went down a list.
- Insight: Ensure your goals are realistic.
- Insight: You don’t need to be the most qualified person in your chosen field to be successful. You can learn skills along the way.
- Insight: List what makes you happy and find a career or project that fits that list. Don't try to be happy afterward.
I messaged Melissa and we set up a call over email.
I've always been passionate about women helping other women. I created this blog to tell stories of successful female-founded businesses. Hopefully, these stories will help inspire more women to found their own businesses.